Watercolor paper flowers

Finally. I did promise. I'll be honest here - these flowers are time consuming and if you want lots of them, you'll want to start several months ahead and work steadily. This is the method I used for most of our wedding flowers. (The spiral flowers were made using this tutorial that I've linked to before.) I was trying to figure out how to do the tutorial and realized that it's probably easiest just to send you straight to the photoset on Flickr. You can click through or watch as a slideshow, and I've included notes. It's easier to show than explain, with this. So click here and then you can come back if you need more notes.

You can make the flowers look vastly different, just by tweaking a little. Change from squares to rectangles to make tall narrow flowers. Change the sizes to whatever you want. Adjust how much you trim off the edge, trim in different shapes. But this should give you a nice solid foundation.

Boiled down process:

1. Purchase your paper. I used these exact pads of watercolor paper (I bought the 18x24" size) and they worked well. I spent about $85 on paper, but didn't have enough time to use all of it.

2. Paint your paper, let it dry, press it flat if necessary. I bought a bunch of watercolors, diluted them as I painted. I was originally hoping for a gradient effect, but that would have required a lot more forethought! I ended up with a nice variation in colors, though.

3. Cut your paper. I cut into 3", 2" and 1" strips, using a cutting mat and a rotary cutter. Then I continued on, cutting into squares. The 3" and 2" squares were most easily done with the rotary cutter, but I preferred free handing the 1" squares as they're a bit fiddly.

4. Working a few squares at a time, fold them in half and then trim the edges to round them.

5. When the edges are all trimmed, roll each petal between your fingers to make it into a cylinder. Set aside.

6. Start assembling. Place a dot of glue on one of the base corners of the first petal, then roll it back up and hold it to set.

7. Add a second petal by spreading it out, dotting both base corners with glue and then wrapping it around the first petal.

8. Continue to add more petals. You'll want the petals to flare out more and more as you work your way along. Eventually, you'll end up with a nice full flower.

And, creating the arrangements ...

{cocktail table centerpiece, with vase}

I just laid down sheets of white cardstock, plopped a vase on them and then started gluing the paper flowers to the paper, making a carpet. There was no real rhyme or reason to this and it actually goes pretty quickly. You just want to work with a nice mix of sizes and create a full effect. When you're happy, remove the vase, trim the edges away so that you can't see them and then tuck the centerpiece in a box, ready for transport. This is actually the easiest (and most fun) part of the entire process.

P.S. - If you're looking for more wedding (or party) tutorials, the streamer backdrop and painted tablecloths and hand dyed napkin tutorials are up on 100 Layer Cake!